F "“° e argument 


BEFORE THE 

801 

Copy l qrqittee oi\ Publid Puildir^ kqd Gjfou:qd$ 

OF THE 


HOUSE OE REPRESENT ATI YES, 

Friday, February 13 , 1874 , 

UPON THE 

MEMORIAL OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES 

OF THE 


Girls’ Reform School, 

m IKa 

ASKING FOR THE 

Construction of suitable Buildings for this Institution, 
the District Legislature having provided the 
necessary legislation and made an 
appropriation for the pur- 
chase of land ; 






















> 




■ 



argument: 


Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee : 

We have not been skimming over the surface or floating gracefully around the 
edge of the giant evil which renders necessary a Girls’ Reform School. There is 
probably no pit of human degradation this side of eternal perdition deeper or 
darker than the dens where we have gone in answer to the cry of little children^ 
innocent children, whose suffering has made me, in despairing moments, ask, 
“ Where is our Father in Heaven, where are his legions of angels that they come 
not instantly down to gather these little ones to their fold ?” 

If there are any sensitive souls among you that can bear the existence of awful 
facts, but cannot bear to hear them mentioned, it will not disturb me in the least 
if, in the midst of what I have to say, you escape from the room ; for since I have 
known the truth on this subject, I have felt no disposition to compromise with so- 
ciety by glossing over the situation. 

Realizing that one fact is worth volumes of argument, I shall give you facts 
chiefly, leaving you to make your own deductions. 

I believe, most profoundly, that discussion of this subject is the only hope for the 
life of our nation ; that silence is death. All that the worst man, or the worst wo- 
man, or the worst fiend could ask for is silence while the terrible work of the 
destroyer goes on. 

I will be glad to answer, if I can, any questions that may occur to you bearing 
directly upon our memorial. Knowing that the subject is infinite in suggestion, I 
am sure you will make no effort to divert me from the main issue — the urgent 
need of a Girls’ Reform School in the District of Columbia, and the responsibility 
of Congress in this matter. 

The Constitution of the United States declares it to be the power and duty of 
Congress “ to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to provide for the 
common defence, and promote the general welfare of the people.” All of the 
legislation Congress ever has enacted in behalf of education, and against vice and 
crime, bears clear witness that its duties and powers never have been construed to 
be limited to material interests only. But in the state, as in families, in the haste 
and eagerness to provide for pressing material wants, moral issues, which in the 
most vital manner concern the individual and general welfare, are apt to be for- 
gotten. 

What is the danger that threatens our firesides to-day ? An invasion from Spain, 
or France, or England? An insult to our flag upon the high seas? Who that has 
a son or daughter does not know that the moral pestilence that walks abroad at 
noonday and poisons the air of night is a more dangerous foe to his household than 
hosts of armed men ? 

There is .no fixed and impassable gulf between the high and the low, the respect- 
able citizens and the dangerous classes. 

If we will not recognize the universal brotherhood of man, if we will not lift the 
weak and the fallen and the outcast to ou.r level, their compensation is sure and im- 
mediate. They will drag our noblest and fairest down to theirs. We may ignore, 
but cannot obliterate the fact that humanity is a unit, and that a tortured nerve in 
any part of the social body may make the whole head heavy and the whole heart 
sick. 

Leaving disinterested philanthropy, therefore, altogether out of the question, 
merely as a selfish and prudential measure, it is wise to spend time, money, and 
strength to secure the reformation of the vicious rather than their punishment. 

It would be wiser still to prevent the existence of the dangerous classes altogether. 


2 


and since clear-headed, large-hearted men are taking counsel more and more with cul- 
tured, thoughtful, intelligent women concerning the deepest problems of human life, 
we see already the dawn of a new day, when reason and justice and purity will tri- 
umph over ignorance and selfishness and blind impulse. 

Notwithstanding the fearful slaughter of infant life, the three millions of people 
of the Revolution have increased to forty millions in less than a century — thirteen to 
one. If this swarming multitude were all the direct descendants of our Puritan an- 
cestors we should probably have a larger percentage of intelligence, energy, and 
thrift ; but the larger proportion is from the over-crowded countries of the old world, 
and chiefly from among the poor and the ignorant who have come to seek their for- 
tune. What wonder, that, beholding American recklessness, liberty to them also 
means license ? What wonder that in the hand-to-hand struggle for daily bread the 
weakest and the most ignorant among the young girls of all this heterogeneous mass 
of elements have fallen by the wayside ? 

Statistics carefully collected by men show that ignorance, destitution, orphanage, 
ill-treatment of parents, seduction, abandonment, and violation form the chief causes 
which lead young girls into a life of infamy, only 25 per cent, in 2,000 cases recorded 
having deliberately chosen that career from natural inclination. 

Statistics further show that seventy-five per cent, of all the girls of the town in 
Europe and America where a record is kept of this class are lured into that life 
under the age of fifteen. 

In one house of ill-fame in this city I found, as the chief attractions for visitors, 
fve children of ages ranging from twelve to sixteen years. 

Upon expressing my horror to the keeper of the house, she said : “ The gentle- 
men, even white-haired old men, pay the highest prices for ‘ tid- bits.’ It don’t pay 
to keep old girls here. The youngest one here was seduced by her master, a re- 
spectable married man, at her service place, and ran away from her mistress. If I 
should turn these children out I should like to know who would take care of them ? 
You can take them all if you choose. I won’t stand in their way. I should like 
to get out of it myself, but nobody will trust me.” 

I groaned inwardly, for, abandoned as she was, I knew she spoke the truth. No 
one would take them, no one would trust them. How dare we say these girls choose 
that life until we give them an opportunity to choose a better? A note came to me 
one day stating that a young girl in Murder Bay wanted to see me. The locality 
was described, but the number was not given. A woman with a blackened eye and 
bruised face said : “ Reckon you’ll find her in the corner house. There’s two ‘ tid 
bits ’ there. But you’d better take care. The Missus keeps an iron club, and she 
don’t mind usin’ it if anybody comes meddlin’ with her business.” I knocked at 
the door. A woman, who had been beautiful once, with a face now distorted with evil 
passions, opened the door, glaring at me furiously. Suddenly a change passed over 
her face, and she did not attempt to molest me as I walked past her to a delicate 
little figure leaning against the wall. I took the icy cold hand of the little girl and 
led her into the parlor, the mistress following. Her face was deathly white, her 
eyes had a heavy, leaden look, and as I put my hand upon her forehead I found it 
was as cold as her hands. She had been drugged, and, as I afterwards found, had 
been in that state for three weeks. I kissed her forehead, thinking “ Whose daughter 
is this ?” The kiss startled her, and she said, faintly, “ O l I know you. I saw 
you once before. Your name is Spencer, and you’ve come for me. I can’t get my 

things. She,” (whispering in my ear,) “ won’t let me have them. Can I go with 

you without a bonnet?” 

Gentlemen of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, I wish 1 had 
language to tell you how I felt when I was obliged to tell her that I did not come 

to take her away. I had no place to take her for a single night. 

Once, three years ago, we had twenty-four of these women and children under 
our care, and we were obliged to close the home because a little company of women 


3 

could not support it and furnish education, training, and employment for the inmates 
alone. 

I will not take time to tell you the story of the rapid downward road, and swift, 
reckless death of this young girl. She had been seduced by her brother-in-law, 
brought from Virginia, and left in this den. When I heard she was dead, I said, 
“ Thank God for that !” 

As I passed out of the door I mentally resolved never to enter such a den again 
until I could say, “ Come with me, there is a place for you.” 

But I have not been able to keep my resolution. The inmates, living and dying, 
have sent for me, and I could not refuse to go, though kind words and a hope of 
something better in the future were all that I could give them. 

The other day I was sent for to come home in haste. In a little room at the foot 
of the stairs, upon the floor, lay a little figure, with a white, child-like face, bearing 
traces of mortal agony. We placed her upon a cot, gave her some nourishment, 
for she was nearly starved, sent for a lady physician, a member of our board, and 
before the evening was over learned her history, which has since been confirmed by 
those who knew her. She had been “on the town” since the age of twelve, having 
been at first lured into a den and locked up for three weeks. The night before she 
was brought to me she had been turned out of a little room because she could not 
pay her rent. She walked up and down the street, with a tiny bundle in her hand, 
penniless, hungry, and cold. Late at night she earned a dollar at her usual trade. 
Fifty cents of this she was obliged to pay to a woman for the use of a room, and 
she was upon the street again'with fifty cents in her hand, and sickness coming on. 
She asked a woman to let her stay all night, and to give her a piece of bread* and 
butter for her fifty cents, which she did. Pain would not let her sleep, and at five 
o’clock in the morning she was frightened at her condition and started for the station- 
house. She was too late. The mortal agony of motherhood had come, and she 
lost the child upon the street, and not daring to look behind her, lest, as she said, 
a ’pliceman might know it and ’rest her,” she hurried on to the station-house, and 
asked an officer if he would take her to the poor-house. She said he told her “ he 
didn’t take none o’ them there no more ; she’d better. go to the Woman’s Christian 
Association.” This was two miles away and she had not a penny. So sfie dragged 
her suffering body to their door. They asked her if she had a letter from anybody. 
“ No, nothing at all but the d’rections from the police-station.” Then she must go 
to some one whom they named and get a letter. Another mile and back. It was 
now late in the day, for she had moved very slowly the long way out, and she had 
eaten nothing since she bought the piece of bread and butter the night before. She 
walked half a mile further, and then dropped upon a doorstep where a man was 
smoking a pipe. She asked him how far it was to the lady to wfiom she had been 
sent. He told her, and she said, “I can’t get there then, fori done give out.” He 
told her “she had better go to Mrs. Spencer’^ ; that wasn’t far off.” She does not. 
know how she came to be lying on my floor. This was two weeks ago. When, 
even within a few days, my heart has grown faint with the long, weary struggle to 
secure help for these poor girls, I have thought of that suffering little girl dragging 
her way through the nation’s capital, and I have grown strong again. 

At the close of the war there was a public debt amounting to $2,700,000,000. 
The interest upon the debt was over $130,000,000 in gold per annum. Very 
soon the Congress of the United States purchased Alaska of Russia, paying for it 
$7,200,000 in gold, and considered the bleak place a bargain at that. (So it would 
have been if they had banished thither all men who seduce and destroy children.) 

For the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia they are constructing a tower a 
thousand feet high. That a free nation a hundred years old may make a demonstra- 
tion that will command the respect and admiration of the world, it is proposed that 
Congress shall be requested to appropriate from three to five millions of dollars, and 
you will do it, for the honor and glory of our nation. How will it look upon the 


4 


pages of history that at this date, with all the magnificent resources of this country 
at command, with full power “ to lay and collect taxes, to provide for the common 
defence and promote the general welfare,” the Congress of the United States, being 
in a penitent vein of retrenchment, could not afford to rear upon the soil over which 
it has exclusive jurisdiction a building wherein the wretched victims of man’s own 
vices may be saved from a life that is worse than death, and transformed into useful 
members of the community ? 

I do not believe that the Forty-third Congress, with the facts put clearly before 
them, will deliberately present the argument of retrenchment as a reason for not 
performing one of the most solemn duties ever laid upon this body. 

Gentlemen of the House have asked me if I did not know that gathering in these 
girls from the streets, even though we secure their reformation, would only make 
room for more ; that this evil is a natural and inevitable necessity. May I ask in 
whose interest .this argument is used ? Is it for our own sons that this fearful supply 
must and will be demanded ? Or is it for the sons of our neighbors ? Surely it is 
not the intention of law-makers by tacit consent to deliberately provide for the ruin 
and degradation of their own families. It is folly to suppose that young and igno- 
rant girls and children can be bought and sold for the worst purposes upon our streets, 
and your own households only can be safe and high and pure. 

Other gentlemen of the House, who are really friendly to our work, have asked 
me why the District Legislature did not proceed to erect the buildings for our insti- 
tution and take the whole responsibility. 

We did not ask the Legislature to take the whole responsibility. We knew it was 
neither just nor possible for them to do it. It is not a purely local evil for which 
the citizens only are responsible. In the summer and autumn, when permanent res- 
idents only are here, this class of girls find themselves on the verge of starvation, and 
large numbers leave the city. But when Congress assembles, the immense foreign 
and floating population that ever gathers around the capital of a great nation creates 
a demand for them, and the keepers of the houses send out their emissaries for new 
girls. The vagrant girls of Washington are peculiarly national and not local va- 
grants. Many of them are brought here, young and ignorant, from distant homes, 
by employees of the Government. Large numbers come in search of employment, 
and find, as the twenty thousand war widows in New York found, that there is but 
one employment for women that men are willing to pay for. 

Over one million men were either slain or disabled by the war. The women 
and children thus thrown upon their own resources flocked in immense numbers to 
the capital, each feeling that she had a special claim upon the Government. No 
one can estimate the number of these who found this the City of Destruction to their 
souls. The army has left Hooker’s Division and Murder Bay as standing witnesses 
of what the nation has inflicted upon the nation’s capital. 

Where is the conscience fund ? Has it been yet appropriated? If not, we pray 
you apply that to our work, that we may blot out for you this standing disgrace to 
the army and the nation ! 

I have found, now and then, among what are called the “wrecks” (and it takes 
only a very little while for a girl of the town to become a wreck) a woman who 
has married a soldier when she was a young girl at school, has been deserted, has 
followed up the lost husband, and failing to find him, or finding him a profligate and 
unwilling to care for her, has, in weakness and desperation, fallen a prey to the 
rabble. The children of such rash marriages, born during the war, I have found 
upon the streets and in those dens by dozens; children who never saw their fathers, 
and whose mothers died either on the town or in lunatic asylums. 

Last and least in point of numbers, but worst in point of character, I have found 
girls born in marriage and out of marriage who have inherited from parents a bias 
toward sensuality which renders them unfit and unsafe to be at large, who ought to 
be in a reform school, under safe guardianship, and at useful labor during their natural 


5 


lives. When men point me to these cases as an evidence of the uselessness of 
attempting reformation, it seems to me they furnish the strongest possible argument 
for taking such measures as will prevent the direct transmission of these propensi- 
ties in a still more dangerous degree to another generation. 

In reference to the present condition of outcast girls in this District I ought to 
say that, fearful as the situation is to-day, it is a decided improvement upon their 
condition three years ago, when our work here first began and the midnight raiding 
system was in full operation. The more civilized method of making arrests (of 
vvomen only, of course) now prevails. A year ago last summer, in three months’ 
time, at a season when comparatively a small number of these girls remain in the 
city, 491 women were arrested, 362 of the number belonging to this class. They 
are fined more or less heavily, according to their attractions or their business ability, 
and are sent back upon the streets to work out the amount of their fine (which they 
borrow) at their usual trade. So that in this way men secure about all the money 
they earn. But this is far milder than the horrible raiding system — dragging them 
from their beds to the station-house in the middle of the night, robbing them of the 
paltry price of their shame, while their wealthy, “respectable” patrons creep quietly 
home, or gather round the station-house to ridicule and enjoy the sufferings of their 
recent charming, genial companions. 

I invited the Chief of Metropolitan Police to be present at this hearing, and 
to state from his personal knowledge the need of this institution to aid him in his 
duties. He knows well that there has been no provision hitherto made for reforma- 
tion, but only for cruel and unjust punishment of one-half of the victims of the 
social evil by the other half, in some spasm of pretended virtue. 

I am not seeking for an office, have never found time in my short life to accom- 
plish the half that is given me to do, but I would like, for one year, to be Chief of 
Police. If there wouldn’t be a general clearing up time in one city of this free and 
happy land, I know nothing of law or reason. I would not arrest a frightened, 
ignorant child or girl, and let a strong man, her employer in vice, go free. I would 
not arrest the accessory and allow the principal to escape. There should be for 
once even-handed justice all round for men and women, and we should see what 
would become of our national vice on that basis. 

The members of* the District Legislature, upon our putting the case clearly and 
fairly before them, did, almost unanimously, what we asked of them, there being 
only four votes against our bill in the House, and none against it in the Council. 
The members said repeatedly that the very discussion of the subject on the plane of 
right and reason was to them educational and purifying. 

If the Congress of the United States will do its duty as faithfully as our citizens 
did theirs, we shall very soon be able to say that no girl in the District of Columbia 
is compelled to earn her daily bread by the sacrifice of soul and body. 

Let me assure you that it is not the citizens of the District only who -will rejoice 
at proper action on your part in this matter. Societies similar to our own are organ- 
ized in all the leading cities of the Union, and we are in constant correspondence 
with their officers and members. We have promised to inform them what members 
of Congress vote “ Aye ” and what ones vote “ No ” on this appropriation, and also, 
so far as we can ascertain them, your exact reasons for your votes. After your ap- 
propriation for a Boys’ Reform School, the intelligent women of the country, large 
numbers of whom I met and counselled with at the Woman’s Congress in New York 
in October, and subsequently in other cities, confidently expect from our National 
Congress a suitable provision for the corresponding but far more neglected class, the 
vagrant outcast girls. 

I also promised the superintendents of the institutions at Randall’s Island, New 
York ; Deer’s Island, Boston ; Middletown, Connecticut ; the Mother Superiors of 
the Houses of the Good Shepherd, and many others, that I would notify them at 
once of the action of Congress in this matter. They could scarcely believe that up 


6 


to this date the capital of the United States contained no provision for the refor- 
mation of ruined girls. 

The Congress of the United States is not and ought not to be indifferent to the 
approval of the people whom it represents, and especially the approval of the no- 
blest and the best of these. The District Legislature, though petitioned by a large 
number of our best citizens to pass our bill, and fully resolved to do it, yet did not 
expect to be sustained in so revolutionary a measure by the masses of their constitu- 
ents. But their action has been sustained universally. It requires so much effrontery 
even on the part of a bad man to oppose it, that if any one has done so it has been 
in a dark place and he hasn’t been heard from. 

Mr. Savage, the Boston Chief of Police, urged me to ask Congress to appropriate 
to our buildings from the receipts of the whiskey tax, since the use of intoxicating 
drinks is so potent an agency in the ruin of the victims whom we are seeking to 
save. 

Mr. Chairman, will you tell me what are the receipts from the tax on liquors ? 

Mr. Platt. About $60,000,000 annually. 

Mrs. S. Then, if the conscience fund is not available, or is insufficient for our pur- 
pose, let me entreat you to secure for us a fraction of this money, coined from the 
tears and blood of helpless women, that we may with it heal and save their children. 

Mr. Savage told me that if he could leave his post he would come down and help 
me urge upon -you this late, yet still timely act of justice. 

He has nobly befriended the outcast girls of Boston, and has saved large numbers 
from their mad career. He has not yet been able to succeed in securing any legis- 
lation against male night-walkers, who, he says, may buy and ruin their hundreds and 
thousands of young girls without fear and without restraint. 

Mr. Wm. R. Lincoln, the Superintendent of the Boys’ House of Refuge in Balti- 
more, who has had forty years’ experience in establishing and conducting reformatory, 
institutions, is here at our request, and, if there is time, will speak to you in our 
behalf. 

Experienced superintendents told me wherever I went that we had the best bill 
that had ever been enacted. They had no such legislation to aid them, and could 
only secure the custody of such abandoned girls as were sent from the courts, or came 
voluntarily, or were brought by their parents. Our bill provides a legal guardian for 
the immense irresponsible class for whom nobody cares. And for this bill we are 
largely indebted to you, though you did not intend it. 

In endeavoring to decide what would be the best means of securing to this class 
of girls the benefits of our proposed institution and methods of reformation, I searched 
through the United States Statutes-at-Large to find the best things you had ever done 
for boys and men, and for respectable but helpless women and children. These I in- 
corporated in our bill for outcast gir^s, and assured the Legislature that you would 
sustain your own enactments. 

Let me take this occasion to thank you for the material, and to disclaim all origi- 
nality except in the application. As an instance of the practical working of re- 
formatory institutions without such legislation, I found in one institution 600 boys and 
90 girls. “ Is that the proportion of boys to girls among criminals ?” I inquired. 
“ Oh no,” said the matron ; <f but the police are easier on the girls. They don’t like 
to arrest them and bring them here.” “ What ! not to a reform school ?” I said. “ But 
don’t you find that they arrest them readily enough when they are sick, or are about 
to become mothers, or for any reason are likely to become troublesome in a den, 
and bring or send them here for you to take care of?” She thought a moment, and 
then said reflectively, “ I believe they are rather apt to be sick when they come here. 
One girl was brought to us just before she was sick three times, and one man (I 
think he was her step-father) was the father of all her children. She isn’t very 
bright, and we were quite indignant about it, but couldn’t do anything.” 

1 learned subsequently from one of the city officials that in that city onlv it was 


7 


estimated that 42,000 girls were “on the town,” being arrested for vagrancy only 
when it suited man’s convenience. 

On the town ! — What does that mean ? Why, for a man it means that he is 
an object of charity, supported at public expense. For a woman, a young girl, 
what ? An object of charity, supported at public expense ? Ah ! no. It means 
shame and horror, that cannot be put into words, to earn the bread she eats, the 
gaudy apparel she wears, and the surplus which man takes from her in the name of 
the law, as her assumed protector. 

Pardon me, gentlemen, but my ideas of man’s chivalry in general have been 
wonderfully toned down since I have personally witnessed the way in which, by 
law and custom, he treats the wrecks whom he has made. 

If, through his reckless selfishness, an unwelcome child is. to be b<$rn, he, like Ju- 
dah of old, says of the mother : “ Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.” She 
hath put Israel to shame. But, unlike Judah, he will not acknowledge the signet, 
and the bracelets, and the staff, and say, “ she hath been more righteous than I,” 
and hasten to provide for her during her mortal peril and agony. 

Men tell us that when we vote we shall lose the chivalrous regard of men. 
Well, I will cheerfully surrender my little share through all time for the high privi- 
lege of securing justice for their victims. I am weary of pleading with men to help 
me. I long to act for myself, as a free-born citizen of this republic, who would use 
her rights to right. giant wrongs. 

The superintendents of the institutions I visited also regarded with favor our plan 
of teaching these girls a variety of trades, using every means to strengthen them, 
and to make them self-reliant, that is usually found effective in training boys for 
self-support and self-respect — making them producers of wealth instead of weak, 
dependent consumers. 

In several large institutions, where there were boys in one department and girls in 
another, I found that beside teaching the boys a great variety of manly occupa- 
tions, such as blacksmithing, carpentering, farming, &c., they were also teaching 
them baking, knitting, weaving, basket and brush-making, chair seating, tailoring, 
paper-box and toy-making, straw-braiding, wire-work, hoopskirt-making, and many 
other employments admirably adapted to girls, while the girls were chiefly employed 
in waiting upon the boys, sewing patches on their garments, darning their hose, and 
making them comfortable generally. 

The difference is, notably, that the boys are taught what pays, the girls what don’t 
pay, and when discharged the boys will be able to earn their living, the girls will 
be dependent upon men as usual. 

Now, we propose to reconstruct that idea and give the training for self-support to 
the one that needs it most. 

Within the past twenty years I have instructed many thousands of young people 
with direct reference to earning their own living. In every branch of a business 
education I have found young women as rapid, intelligent, thorough, and reliable as 
young men. We would gladly develop and strengthen the latent faculties in these 
outcast girls, who may have slumbering within them genius the world cannot afford 
to lose. 

Since we must support this class, either at enormous expense as criminals, or at 
moderate expense at useful employment, adding to the material and possibly the 
intellectual resources of the country, it requires no argument to show on which side 
economy and true statesmanship lie. 

I had hoped to have time to speak of the cruel, wanton destruction of infant life 
resulting from the appalling necessity, that when a child is born, or to be born, out 
of wedlock, one or the other, mother or child, must die. The world will not 
tolerate them together. How fiends must laugh and angels weep over this mockery 
of virtue, that demands the murder of an innocent child in whom Jehovah saw fit 
to breathe the breath of life. 


8 


I undertook once to keep a record of the dead infants found in highways and by- 
wavs, in the nooks and corners and crannies of this great city ; but, after three 
months, I found I could not afford the time. There was an average of about three 
per week during that time, one hundred and fifty-six per year, not to mention the 
far larger number more securely hidden away and never found. 

A man and his wife for years did a thriving business here burning the little bodies in 
stoves at a small sum per head. If these had been animals, instead of human beings, 
what a loss to the world this sacrifice would have involved ! 

But what is to hinder ? What is to prevent the existence of these little souls so 
mercilessly torn from their bodies ? 

Surely no law, and no execution of law, while men only legislate and execute. 

A polished gentleman not long ago said to a young girl in this city, whom he had, 
after persistent effort, ruined and then deserted : “ Why do you trouble me? If you 
have been a fool, take the consequences. If all the young girls I have seduced in 
Washington should follow me up as you do, I shouldn’t be able to live in the 
District.” 

There is no obstacle interposed against causes. What shall we do with effects ? 

Older countries, far more densely populated than ours, have discerned the wisdom 
of gathering in these little ones by thousands, giving them them the fostering care 
of the State, (the training denied to their parents,) and rearing them to be the very 
strength of the nation. 

In Moscow, 40,000 children annually are cared for in one institution, far more scien- 
tifically, faithfully, and even tenderly than they can be in the miserable homes of the 
poor and vicious. Some of these children, possessed of transcendent genius, be- 
come the flower of the Russian army and navy. 

In New York city when they began to keep a record on this subject it was ascer- 
tained that one hundred and seventy infants were found dead in streets, alleys, and rivers 
in one year. A Foundling Hospital was reared, and a little basket cradle placed at 
the door wherein the suffering mother might silently place her babe. The number 
of dead bodies found rapidly diminished, but the public neglected to continue its 
munificent donations, the State failed to make appropriations for the expenses of the 
asylum, and the ladies in charge were reluctantly compelled to take in the little 
basket. Hundreds were already in their charge, and it taxed their resources to the 
utmost to maintain them. Soon after three dead infants were found near the door 
of the asylum, and in a little while twelve were found in the immediate neighbor- 
hood, some frozen, some smothered, and one with a little string around its neck. 
Who can tell what anguish wrung the heart of the trembling mother when, finding 
the little basket gone, she turned away from the door and struck out the pleading 
infant’s life ! 

Our Infants’ Home is one of our most cherished features in the institution we are 
aiming to rear. 

A member of the House said to me : “ Would it not be better to let them die ?” 
I was dumb with surprise. Yet he but echoed what the world has said for cen- 
turies. 

Are we wiser than the Lord who created human souls, who places pearls in the 
shell of the oyster, diamonds in coal mines, angelic, immortal souls in the frail bodies 
of crushed, suffering women ? Shall we not gather these little ones in, and do for 
them in some measure on earth what we expect the angels to do for them when we 
suffer them to be untimely driven from their infant bodies ? Shall not this capital of 
the United States be a model city in its care of future citizens, and in justice to 
its women and children ? 



0 020 685 

REMARKS BY MR. RIDDLE & MR. LINCOLN. 


Hon. A. G. Riddle, Solicitor of the Board of Trustees of the Girls’ Reform 
School, said : 

If what Mrs. Spencer has said to this committee has not convinced your 
judgment and moved your hearts, no words of mine can avail. 

I have been a personal witness to the long, fearful struggles of this lady, 
who, with a few other brave souls, three years ago began this enterprise with 
the whole tide of popular prejudice and ignorance and moral evil against 
them. When they visited the women whom they sought to save, there was 
no opposition there. The outcry was nearly all from our “ respectable ” citi- 
zens. These lost women and girls met them gladly, came out, without en- 
treaty, in large numbers, and placed themselves under the protection of this 
little band of women, willing to be instructed, glad to be saved, glad of the 
promised opportunity for honest labor. 

I am ashamed to say our Christian community utterly failed to sustain the 
noble work — ignominiously failed. Work, money, promises, everything 
failed, except the boundless courage and faith and hope of these brave women 
.who now have come to you. 

It is a disgrace to civilization, a disgrace to the name of Christianity; but 
I am compelled to say there is no place in the capital of the nation wherein 
these outcast girls can receive shelter, instruction, honest employment, human 
kindness. Nobody will take one of them. No family will risk it. The stain 
is too deep, too dark, because it is a woman who has fallen . 

We ask the Congress of the United States, Shall there be a place? It rests 
with you. 

Mr. Platt, Chairman of the Committee, asked Mr. Wm. R. Lincoln, Su- 
perintendent of Boys’ House of Refuge, Baltimore, Md., what proportion of 
the inmates of his institution were permanently reformed. 

Mr. Lincoln. It is impossible to declare positively, since large numbers of 
those who are reformed desire to cover up all traces of their ever having been 
in a reform school ; but as nearly as we can ascertain about 83 per cent, never 
return to a vicious life. 

Mr. Platt. You are personally acquainted with the career of some of the 
reformed boys, of course ? 

Mr. Lincoln. Certainly; well acquainted. We know them to be in every 
attainable position of honor and trust and profit. They are merchants, law- 
yers, physicians, artists, ministers, officers, teachers, farmers ; in short, it would 
be impossible to say where in useful callings they are not. I send my own 
son, by choice, to be instructed by a gentleman who was once a refuge boy 
under my charge. 


